‘The Discovery’ is the Latest in the Sci-Fi-Not-Sci-Fi Genre
Do you like Sci-Fi? Then don’t watch The Discovery
Spoilers ahead.
The Discovery draws us in with a very engaging premise: proof of an Afterlife has been found; and suicides have skyrocketed. The discovery is made by a scientist who doesn’t know where the soul goes, but that it does go somewhere. His son, Will, is deeply disturbed by his father’s work and travels to his island mansion, where a jumpsuited cult army labors away for his father’s experiments.
Sounds like science fiction, right? You may muse to yourself, “I liked Arrival and Interstellar, so I may like this too.”
But science fiction, like fantasy, is a finicky genre to mess with. Once a story begins to weave in supernatural elements that bend or break the rules of our own familiar reality, it needs to pay obnoxiously close attention to its ability to keep its augmented world consistent. The Discovery, despite its alluring premise, fails to succeed in this right. The result? An otherwise good story with a weirdly crammed-in mechanic, that leaves the door to the fourth wall slightly ajar, making the viewers squirm in discomfort.
In the beginning of the film, the protagonist Will saves Isla, a woman who is attempting to drown herself. They slowly fall for each other over the course of the film. They discover through the experiments that the soul seems to enter an alternate reality after death, to correct for past regrets. As it turns out, Will had been going through multiple reiterations of realities in which he fails to save Isla, coming a bit closer each time. He saves her at last by helping her come to peace with the death of her son. Soon after, Will moves on to a new reality, where Isla and her son are happily alive, but strangers to him. The film cuts to black, just as you’re left wondering if he remembers her or not.
It’s a thoughtful story, one that really creates an emotional arc, weaving in elements of regret, loss, and the vain search for meaning. But in hindsight, the entire gimmick with reality-hopping was not only unnecessary, but detracting to the gravity of the film.
Harry Potter does something similar. You can’t just say “Okay, this world is like ours, but with magic,” and not develop a world that reflects it. For example, the Statute of Secrecy means that wizards just hide their existence from Muggles, which is a convenient way for Rowling to show why we’ve never noticed the Magical World. But what that really means is that wizards have, since the beginning of time, have decided that it was okay for Muggles to die from perfectly preventable causes.
Oftentimes, scientists will produce something that has no value, be it a new material or process or equation. Over time, however, the rest of humanity finds a use for it, and through it, change the world forever. Could the architects of DARPAnet have imagined Facebook, Waze, or Snapchat? When Rowling introduces magic, or when The Discovery introduces a proven afterlife, that opens a whole Pandora’s Box that doesn’t just imply, but forces a fundamental shift in how the world will look. The fact that the world largely remains the same creates a painful tension that ruins the story it supports.
Will’s father, Thomas Harbor, is the discoverer of the afterlife. He is a cold scientist, concerned more about gaining knowledge of this mystery than the millions who have taken their lives. This MO completely falls apart when he learns of the nature of this afterlife: that it takes the deceased to an alternate reality, to change their deepest regrets.
The implication of that discovery dwarfs his previous one. It means that everything can be better, multiplied by a bajillion. It changes everything. The world as we know it is immaterial. It is only one among infinite realities. If your life sucks, just move onto the next one, which is guaranteed to be better.
But Thomas the Scientist decides instead that this information is too dangerous, and scraps all his research. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad decision, but what I do know is that the weight of his discovery suddenly minimizes the weight of the entire film. Why does anything matter at all? Why would you stay in a reality where you actively suffer instead of moving on? Even if you feel there is value in staying, how can that be your decision to keep it from others?
The Discovery was supposed to be about fate, regret, love, and redemption. But instead, the discovery of new realities simply reminded us that we were outside the show in our reality, looking in, disconnected from the characters and their lives.
